About me

This blogname was derived from the novel The Secret Life Of Saeed The Pessoptimist by the Palestinian Israeli Emile Habiby: absurdism as weapon against the (ir)realities of daily life in Palestine/Israel. (The subtitle is from a book by Dutch author Renate Rubinstein. It could as well be my motto).
My real name is Martin (Maarten Jan) Hijmans. I've been covering the ME since 1977 and have been a correspondent in Cairo. I started my 'Abu Pessoptimist' blog in January 2009 out of anger during the onslaught in Gaza. The other one, The Pessoptmist, is meant to be a sister version in English. (En voor de Nederlandstaligen: ik wilde in november 2009 een tweede blog in het Engels beginnen en ontdekte te laat dat als je één account hebt, een profiel dan meteen ook voor allebei de blogs geldt. Vandaar dat het nu ineens in het Engels is... So sorry.)

Monday, July 9, 2012

Shiites in eastern Saudi province of Qatif protest arrest of sheikh

AFP reports new clashes in the eastern Saudi province of Qatif, heartland of the Shiites in the kingdom:

Two Shiites were killed in overnight clashes with police in the eastern Saudi province of Qatif following the arrest of a prominent Shiite cleric and government critic, activists said on Monday. Akhbar Shakuri and Mohammed Filfel died and a dozen other protesters were wounded during the clashes that erupted when police opened fire to disperse a demonstration against the arrest of Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr, said the activists.

The violence occurred in Riyadh
Street, the main artery of Qatif city, they said. The reports could not
be independently verified.

Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr

The interior ministry described
Nimr as an "instigator of sedition" as it announced that he was arrested
at Al-Awamiya in Eastern Province on Sunday, after being wounded in the
leg while putting up resistance.

He was transferred to hospital and was due to be interrogated, ministry spokesman Mansur Turki said, cited by the official SPA news agency.

The new deaths bring to nine the number of people killed in clashes between Saudi authorities and protesters in the Shiite-populated region.

Nimr is considered one of the
main advocates of demonstrations that first took place in February 2011
after an outbreak of violence between Shiite pilgrims and religious
police in the holy city of Medina.

The protests escalated after the
kingdom led a force of Gulf troops into neighbouring Bahrain to help
crush a month-long Shiite-led uprising against the country's Sunni
monarchy.

Most of Saudi Arabia's estimated
two million Shiites live in the east, where the vast majority of the
OPEC kingpin's huge oil reserves lie. Saudi Shiites complain of marginalisation in the kingdom.